Very often, people who have become familiar with the Bible will remark that
the God of the Old Testament seems to be rather harsh in comparison with the God
who manifests Himself in the New Testament. By way of illustration, in
yesterday's Mass we read the story of Susanna from the book of Daniel, in which
we learned that in the Old Testament God required the death
penalty for those who committed adultery.2 Yet, in the same Mass, the Gospel has
Jesus Christ -- the very same God, made man -- saving a woman caught in adultery
from the crowd that was supposed to stone her according to His very own law:
"Let he who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her."3
Obviously, there is a different outlook in the New Testament.

Most folks are pleased that Jesus Christ will not have us struck down for our
sins, and that our Lord wants us to have the chance to repent and to do good.
Most of us need that chance. But the apparent difference between God in the Old
Testament and in the New does give rise to a philosophical problem -- It prompts
us to ask the question: "Is it possible that God has changed." Clearly
it is not possible, for God has always been perfect, and any
change could only be a loss of perfection. To say that God can change is to
place limits upon Him, who is not subject to limitation. As Saint James tells
us, God is the "Father of Lights, without change or shadow of
alteration."4 It is an important question today, for there are many who
claim to be Catholics who foolishly claim that God is not only changeable, but
has always been changing, is changing now, and always will change. For such
people, apparent change from Testament to Testament didn't stop two thousand
years ago -- and some of them will even try to make the case that God now
approves of adultery ... or at least He doesn't care.

And not only do these folks claim a change in God's outlook on adultery, but
they claim that the same sort of changes are taking place in every aspect of
doctrine and morality. What was true or good a few thousand years ago is no
longer true or good, these modernists will say, because God is changing
constantly. Now, the self serving nature of this modernism becomes immediately
apparent when we realize that the modernists are claiming that God is changing
in accordance with what modern man thinks (or, rather, feels) about God -- and
that what is true or good today is true or good only because it is what the
consensus of modern men agrees to be truth or goodness. To modernist man, God
who is imperfect is perfecting Himself by becoming like man!!

Today's epistle is just a "taste" of Saint Paul's explanation of
this apparent change in God from one Testament to the next. Like so many of the
little sections of the Scriptures that we read on Sunday morning, this is one
that ought to be read in context and in its entirety -- so, if you might take a
half an hour sometime this week to sit down and read his brief Epistle to the
Galatians.

The essence of what Saint Paul writes in this epistle is that the favor of
God's grace is something that God promised to the human race, and particularly
to Abraham -- that the graces lost by Adam and Eve for the entire human race,
would one day be restored in one of Abraham's numerous descendents. Paul
describes this promise of God as an "inheritance" -- an inheritance
destined for a very special descendant of Abraham. The people of the Old
Testament, even though they were also children of Abraham, were just not in line
to receive the inheritance. In Paul's analogy, they were the children of the
slave girl, Agar, whom God commanded Abraham to banish together with her son
Ishmaël to the fastness of Arabia. It was through Abraham's legitimate wife
Sara, and son, Isaac, that the inheritance would be passed on to Jesus Christ.
But, even at that, until the inheritor was born and came of age, even the sons
of Isaac were no more than trustees of the inheritance -- it was not for them to
enjoy, but for One yet to come.

The distinction, then, between the Old Testament and the New, is not an
example of God changing -- far from it, it is the distinction between the
treatment accorded to hired servants as opposed to family members. God was stern
with the people of the Old Testament because they were, so to speak, the hired
help who were just minding things until the Inheritor came of age.

The good news of all of this is that the Inheritor has in fact come into His
inheritance, and has presented us to His Father as His adopted brothers and
sisters, allowing us to share in that same inheritance. Through Jesus Christ, we
too can live the life of God's grace, not as a servant living under the
restrictions of an employer, but as an adopted son or daughter enjoying the
hospitality of our common Father.

Has God changed? - No. Has God's law changed? -- again No -- at least not in
terms of truth or morality. We may not be bound by the myriad ceremonial
restrictions of the old "hired help," but truth remains truth and
goodness remains goodness. If there is a change, it is a change in God's people,
not in God -- for now God's people respond to Him not in servile fear, but in
response to the invitation of His grace, in Faith and in Love.

"That Jerusalem which is above is free, which is our mother." The
descendents of Ishmaël were banished to Arabia, but in their Koran,
Mohammed inverts the story, making them the children of the promise, and the
sons of Isaac the servants. The reality of it is that it matters not. It is not
the earthly Jerusalem that is free -- the earthly Jerusalem is to this day being
fought over in bloody conflict by descendents of Isaac and Ishmaël -- it is the
heavenly Jerusalem of those who accept Jesus Christ that is the inheritance.

If we are to share in that inheritance, it is essential to understand that we
must reject any and all of the foolish notions that suggest that our Father in
heaven is being perfected by becoming more like us -- to recognize that it is we
who can become perfect only by becoming more like Him, like our Brother and
Sister who adopted us, Jesus and Mary. And while we are at it, let us remember
to pray for the descendents of Abraham; for the houses of Isaac and Ishmaël;
that they too may become adopted sons and daughters, brothers and sisters of
Jesus and Mary, by responding to God's grace in the Faith and in Love.